The Independence Institute’s Todd Shepherd, along with this blog, have spent two years covering, and ultimately exposing, what is now the Abound Solar scandal. Understandably, much of the focus is now on Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck’s criminal investigation as well as a Congressional Oversight Committee inquiry into the bankrupt solar panel manufacturer.

But something else within those emails caught my attention reminding me of free market economist and Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman’s famous quote, “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” In other words, even things that appear to be free have an associated cost.

With HB 1001 we will manufacture and install panels and turbines all over Colorado to capture free energy….The sun will always shine for free, the winds will always blow for free, and our energy production will be cleaner. Renewable energy, green jobs, and a cleaner future — what’s not to like?

At roughly the same time that Tyler publicly fantasized about “free energy,” a credit advisor for the Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee program James McCrea was concerned about “major issues” with Abound Solar’s marketability. In an email dated April 1, 2010, just seven days after Tyler’s press release, McCrea explained:

Another issue is the very limited supply of telluride, its potential price trajectory and other demands for it. Related to this is a question of the viability of the Abound panels as compared to other panels and whether there is sufficient benefit to allow the panels to be profitable if Te [telluride] prices really increase. If the price really rises will there be alternative uses that can afford it basically turning it into a non available input for Abound?

I don’t believe we have ever worked with an input material that is so limited. We need to think that through carefully.

Before going bankrupt this summer, Abound produced cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-filmed photovoltaic solar panels. Cadmium and tellurium, used in the manufacturing of Abound’s panels, are two of the world’s 17 “rare earth elements” that are needed for everything from smart phones to solar panels to high tech weapons systems. My former colleague Michael Sandoval, now an investigative reporter with the Heritage Foundation, and I have written several columns on general issues with rare earth elements.

This email highlights the problem specific to Abound, and McCrea was right to be concerned. According to the December 2011 DOE Critical Materials Strategy the price of tellurium has been going up since 2007:

The price dropped in 2006, but in 2007 resumed its upward trend owing to increased production of cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cells.

Furthermore, China controls the vast majority of rare earth elements. In August 2012, the Chinese announced an ambitious plan to increase its stranglehold on the world’s available supply of rare earths. According to China Daily the country:

launched a physical trading platform for rare earth metals as part of its efforts to regulate the sector and strengthen its pricing power for the resources.

As the world’s largest producer of rare earth metals, China now supplies more than 90 percent of the global demand for rare earth metals, although its reserves account for just 23 percent of the world’s total.

The article reiterated what Michael and I have said on numerous occasions, mining rare earths comes with a significant environmental cost that green zealots like Tyler completely ignore when claiming solar energy is free and clean:

Mining the metals greatly damages the environment. In recent years, China has come down heavily on illegal mining and smuggling, cut export quotas and imposed production caps, stricter emissions standards and higher resource taxes to control environmental damage and stave off resource depletion.

However, these measures have irked rare earth importers, who complained about rising prices and strained supplies.

But China did exactly what it said it would do in 2009. It drove up prices with reduced output as global demand increased.

China’s rare earth output fell 36 percent year on year to 40,000 tonnes in the first half of the year. Prices of major rare earth products in July remained twice as high as prices at the beginning of 2011, although down from the beginning of the year.

In July 2009, about a year before President Barack Obama announced a $400 million loan guarantee for Abound, Jack Lifton, an expert on sources and uses of rare minerals, wrote a lengthy article for Resource Investor about the availability of tellurium for First Solar, a global leader in cadmium telluride solar panel manufacturering. Lifton’s conclusion should have served as a prophetic warning for Abound and any hope of profitability:

A company such as First Solar, which is critically dependent on a secure supply of tellurium to exist and on an unsustainable growth in the supply to it of tellurium for it to grow and achieve competitive pricing is a big risk for short-term investors. The maximum supply and production levels attainable of tellurium are quantifiable even if the actual production figures are murky, and they do not bode well for the future of First Solar if it must make profits to survive.

The next time you hear a politician like Max Tyler tout the benefits of “free” and “clean” energy, remember Abound Solar because there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Unfortunately for taxpayers who provided a $400 million loan guarantee for Abound, 2012 may be the year that the sun sets on Pat Stryker’s pet project.

Apparently taxpayers have been venture capitalists invested in Abound Solar since 2007, well before the controversial $400 million taxpayer-guaranteed loan:

In 2007, the Department awarded the company a grant to support a pilot project to demonstrate the viability of its manufacturing process. In December 2010, the Department issued a loan guarantee to support the construction of two commercial scale plants: one in Longmont, Colorado and a second new facility in Tipton, Indiana.

Perhaps Abound should have heeded Ronald Reagan’s warning when he said the nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” John Keyes, founder of the first commercial solar energy corporation, knows this first hand. He explained in an interview that the worst thing to happen to the industry he loves was government involvement which began in the Carter Administration.

For example, the $400 million loan-guarantee agreement between Colorado-based Abound Solar and the DOE reveals that Abound Solar — and, it is safe to assume, all loan-guarantee recipients — had to comply with a staggering range of federal laws and regulations, including, but not limited to:

The Recovery Act;

The Davis-Bacon Act; Office of Management and Budget regulations;

Environmental laws (including those involving “air emissions, discharges to surface water or ground water, noise emissions, solid or liquid waste disposal, the use, generation, storage, transportation or disposal of toxic or Hazardous Substances or wastes, or other environmental health or safety matters”);

The Investment Company Act;

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act;

Buy American regulations;

Lobbying laws;

Foreign asset control laws;

Prohibited person laws;

Prohibited jurisdiction laws;

Corrupt practices laws;

The Anti-Terrorism Order.

Scratch the surface of any one of the above categories and you find requirements like this one, in the OMB compliance section:

“OMB shall have certified in writing (in form and substance satisfactory to DOE) that the DOE Credit Facility Documents and the Project comply with the provisions of the Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009, P.L. No. 111-8, Division C, Title III, as amended by Section 408 of the Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2009, P.L. No. 111-32.”

Keep in mind that’s just one provision in more than 100 pages of detailed requirements that span the breadth and depth of federal laws and regulations. And in case the loan guarantee agreement by the DOE is not suffocating enough, the following legal, financial and regulatory blanket — as revealed in the Abound Solar documents — is placed atop the specific, enumerated rules and regulations loan-guarantee recipients are required to obey:

“All provisions of this term sheet are subject to the following (the “Program Requirements”): (i) the provisions of Title XVII, all applicable provisions of the Recovery Act, and the Applicable Provisions, (ii) all DOE or Federal Financing Bank (“FFB”) legal and financial requirements, policies, and procedures applicable to the Title XVII program from time to time, and (iii) the Office of Management and Budget’s Initial Implementing Guidance for the Recovery Act, M-09-10 (February 18,2009), Updated Implementing Guidance for the Recovery Act, M-09-15 (April 3, 2009), Updated Implementing Guidance for the Recovery Act, M-09-21 (June 22, 2009) and, in each case, any amendment, supplement or successor thereto (collectively referred to herein, the “OMB Implementing Guidance”).”

The Abound Solar loan-guarantee documents suggest that a newborn company, which lays down with the DOE, runs the risk of being smothered by the federal leviathan before ever bringing a product to market.

Not surprisingly, the DOE doesn’t take any responsibility for smothering the newborn. Instead, it blames China and then claims the answer is MORE taxpayer money. That might explain its cavalier attitude about losing taxpayer money:

While disappointing, this outcome reflects the basic fact that investing in innovative companies – as Congress intended the Department to do when it established the program – carries some risk.

Of course, there really isn’t much “risk” when using someone else’s money.

Complete Colorado’s Todd Shepherd reported, that Abound’s DOE loan guarantee had the appearance of more than just an investment in an upstart solar company. It looked a little more like political payback in a classic pay-to-play scheme. The billionaire heiress Pat Stryker could have financed the entire project herself, but instead used her political connections to put taxpayers on the hook.

The firm awaits $10 million from the DOE and $10 million from its investors but has a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. Our sources inform us that the DOE is waiting for the investors and the investors are waiting for the DOE. Abound’s venture investors include DCM, Technology Partners, GLG Partners, Bohemian Companies, and Invus.

Abound already has drawn down $70 million of its $400 million taxpayer-guaranteed loan, but it is still in a world of hurt. At current spending levels, Abound has less than four weeks of cash flow left according to Wesoff:

The firm is looking to lower its burn rate from $2 million per week to $2 million per month, according to sources close to the firm. The sources have indicated that there is roughly $7 million in the bank, a painfully short runway, and that vendors are being paid in a very selective manner.

Obviously the mass layoffs of nearly 70 percent of its Colorado workforce were a drastic cost cutting measure rather than a “retooling” of the production line as so many other media outlets have reported.

Stryker’s reluctance to provide more capital for Abound speaks volumes. If she won’t dump just a fraction of another $10 million, little more than pocket change for her Bohemian Companies, down the Abound rabbit hole, then why should taxpayers? As we reported last week, taxpayers may be on the hook for more than just the loan guarantee. They could be paying out more than $2 million in unemployment benefits for layoffs from jobs that taxpayers paid to create in the first place.

Lux Research, a self-described “independent research and advisory firm providing strategic advice and ongoing intelligence on emerging technologies” including solar, predicted that 2012 will not be kind to Colorado’s Abound Solar. Lux’s Matt Feinstein wrote in PV Magazine:

Abound. One of the more prominent CdTe start-ups, Abound has been plagued recently by several departures from its management team and industry rumors that its modules haven’t been performing as expected. Perhaps more importantly, First Solar has abandoned its research and development activities in CIGS to concentrate on its core CdTe technology.

This isn’t news to our readers. We already wrote about Abound’s management shakeups and First Solar’s double down on CdTe panels. However, the news story here is that a research company specializing in solar technology is predicting it, and PV Magazine, a trade publication for the “international photovoltaic community,” is publishing it. The question is whether advocates for Colorado’s new energy economy will acknowledge it.

Unfortunately for taxpayers who provided a $400 million loan guarantee for Abound, 2012 may be the year that the sun sets on Pat Stryker’s pet project.

White House visitor logs reveal that a “Pat Stryker” had a meeting in the West Wing in October 2009 according to the Sunlight Foundation. So far Sunlight has been unable to confirm if the meeting was with thePat Stryker, Abound Solar investor, billionaire heiress, and Obama bundler. Although, it’s hard to believe that another Pat Stryker would have that type of access.

Sunlight also revealed that newly filed documents show Abound Solar “is just the latest firm receiving a DOE loan guarantee—a program enabled by the 2009 stimulus bill—to hire representation in Washington. Of the 24 companies awarded loans, 16 currently employ lobbyists, and 11 of those specifically mention the loan guarantee program in their lobbying reports.”

Who are the lobbyists?

The three B&D Consulting lobbyists hired by Abound Solar are all former government officials. One is Joshua Andrews, a former aide to Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., who has defended the loan guarantee program and likened the GOP attacks to bomb-throwing. Eshoo’s district includes many of the venture capital firms who have invested in green technology companies like Solyndra. She also serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee, although not on the subcommittee that has been holding hearings.

Another lobbyist, Cathy Tripodi, is a former Department of Energy official and used to be the director of energy at the Indiana Economic Development Corporation. A third lobbyist, Andrew Ehrlich, is a former chief of staff to the Republican leadership in the late 1990s, is a “recognized figure in Washington circles” and a “leading thinker on market-based strategies in the energy, tax and health care sectors,” according to his bio.

Based on Abound’s latest problems, hiring lobbyists for more favorable treatment from government might be all the company has left.

Just as I finally learned what “Re<C” means, Google is abandoning its financially unsustainable project. The acronym stands for Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal. No wonder I didn’t know what it meant. The equation is all wrong.

Paul Chesser, an associate fellow for the National Legal and Policy Center, reports that Google came face to face with the hard economic reality of its solar paradise and green jobs fantasy but:

not before the company poured more than $850 million into renewable energy ventures. That included a $168 million investment in BrightSource Energy’s first large-scale solar project – the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System – which is under construction in California’s Mojave Desert.

Google also found out that the “clean” solar technology isn’t all the eco-friendly. In fact, a recent study reports that Google’s Ivanpah would have a catastrophic affect on the desert tortoise, including “90 percent of non-adult tortoises…killed per year, with 3,000 total to be disturbed and 3,344 acres of habitat permanently destroyed.”

Chesser concludes, “Google has determined its efforts to make renewable energy ‘cheaper than coal’ no longer make ‘business sense’ – even generous protections of billions of dollars in taxpayer loan guarantees cannot make it work.”

By now it’s obvious that the Solyndra scandal never should have happened. It’s not even a case of Monday morning quarterbacking. A number of people involved could see the disaster coming.

There is a larger principle here. Government should not use taxpayer money to socialize risk while privatizing profits. Examples such as Colorado-based Abound Solar, which received a $400 million loan guarantee, prove that crony capitalism simply rewards the well connected at taxpayer expense.

Abound Solar

Abound Solar, according to its Web site, “produces next-generation thin-film cadmium telluride solar modules” and “is committed to reducing the cost of solar electricity to levels competitive with fossil fuels.”

It is the brainchild of former Colorado State University (CSU) Professor W.S. Sampath and two former students Kurt Barth and Al Enzenroth. It began as AVA Solar and then incorporated into Abound in 2007.

The Web site says it employs 350 people in three Colorado locations. Its Colorado manufacturing plant is located in Weld County, which granted Abound up to $100,000 per year for the next ten years in business property tax rebates. According to sources, the reason for the rebate was job creation intended to benefit Weld County residents. Yet when officials and interested parties ask how many of the 350 jobs have gone to Weld County residents, the solar company does not answer.

Currently Abound has a manufacturing capacity of 65 megawatts expanding to 850 megawatts – at some point. However, in 2010 it manufactured only 30 megawatts. One wonders, if Abound can produce more, why doesn’t it?

The Web site does say it is “growing,” and news reports claim the company plans to add anywhere from 850 to 1,000 employees thanks to a $400 million taxpayer-guaranteed loan Abound received in July 2010. The taxpayer cash is so it can expand its manufacturing capabilities to a facility in Tipton, Indiana. The Indiana Economic Development Corporation “extended up to $11.85 million in tax credits and $250,000 in training grants” as well.

Abound Solar further claims $260 million in private investments, part of which came from billionaire medical heiress Pat Stryker’s Bohemian Companies. This is where the story gets interesting.

Thanks to Independence Institute investigative reporter Todd Shepherd, we still have access to the Web page that lists Bohemian as an investor even though it does not appear on the company’s current Web site. The exact amount that Stryker has given is not public at this time. Also, CSU and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are listed as funding resources.

Total public and private monies equal $673,100,000. Assuming Abound can “create” some 1,350 jobs, that is $498,593 per job, of which $360,000 comes from public coffers.

However, Abound’s Indiana manufacturing facility is not scheduled to open until 2013 or 2014, which seems like a long time to wait to “create” jobs and turn a profit.

As a comparison, the Denver Bronco’s stadium cost $364 million to build of which 68 percent was publicly financed. With a yes vote from taxpayers in November 1998, construction began in August 1999 and was completed in September 2001.

This is not an endorsement of publicly funded professional sports facilities but rather an assumption that the Broncos management didn’t want a disruption in cash flow that could come from the inconvenience of a lengthy construction project.

I asked Abound if the company is still on track for a 2013 expansion and received no response. For most companies, time means money except in solar panels.

Pat Stryker

Forbes lists medical heiress and founder of Bohemian Companies/Foundation Pat Stryker as number 331 of its top “400 Richest People in America.” Worth $1.3 billion, the Fort Collins resident could single-handedly fund Abound Solar and still be well above the poverty line.

While some of her fortune has gone to Abound Solar, she also has chosen to donate more than $2.2 million (probably a low figure) to Democrats and their causes over the last several election cycles. Beneficiaries include Barack Obama, one-term Congresswoman and Fort Collins resident Betsy Markey, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar when he successfully ran for U.S. Senate in Colorado.

Stryker is also a charter member of the notorious “gang of four” which changed the political landscape in Colorado through an organization called the Colorado Democracy Alliance (CoDA). Their success was titled the “Colorado Miracle” and is being replicated in other states.

Congresswoman Betsy Markey

With the help from Stryker in 2008, Markey beat incumbent republican Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave in Colorado’s conservative 4th Congressional District. Abound Solar, Pat Stryker, and Colorado State University are all in the 4th CD. Between 2008 and 2010 election cycles, CSU employees also donated nearly $27,000 to Markey’s campaigns.

When the Waxman-Markey (named for Congressmen Henry Waxman and Ed Markey) cap and trade bill, which included a national renewable energy standard, came up for a vote, Congresswoman Markey danced around the issue for weeks because it wasn’t a popular bill in the 4th CD. Ultimately she voted “yes.”

In an interview on my radio show following the vote, Markey cited “green jobs” as one of her reasons. What she didn’t cite was her relationship to Pat Stryker and Abound Solar or the $2,000 campaign contribution she received from Henry Waxman the night before the vote.

Shortly after the vote, Abound Solar was part of a group that helped pay for TV ads thanking Markey for saying yes to Waxman’s bill. Todd Shepherd exposed the politically incestuous relationship and suggested:

[T]he connections between Representative Betsy Markey (D, CO-4), billionaire heiress Pat Stryker, and Abound Solar, appear to have all of the fingerprints of the kind of pay-to-play agenda that has left many Americans wondering how they got stuck with unpopular bills such as cap and trade, formally known as Waxman-Markey (named after a different Markey).

Markey also urged the approval of Abound’s $400 million taxpayer-guaranteed loan. The Denver Business Journal reported, “Abound applied for the loan guarantee more than a year ago, and Markey and other members of Colorado’s congressional delegation pushed for approval.”

“Colorado State University is internationally known for its green initiatives and clean-energy research including alternative fuels, clean engines, photovoltaics, “smart” grid technology, wind engineering, water resources, and satellite-based atmospheric monitoring and tracking systems. It’s also known as a “green” university for its sustainability efforts on campus and abroad.

Stryker also has a connection to CSU, having donated millions to the university. Furthermore, former CSU president Al Yates became Stryker’s mouthpiece and representative on CoDA. The Blueprint, a must-read book from Adam Schrager and Rob Witwer, details the Yates-Stryker relationship along with how democrats won control in Colorado.

Finally, CSU is home to the Center for the New Energy Economy headed by former Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, a renewable energy activist, and funded by private donations, a third of which came from Stryker’s Bohemian Foundation. Ritter now makes $300,000 to promote renewable energy throughout the country.

Governor Bill Ritter

With the help of CoDA and Pat Stryker, Democrat Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter won the 2006 Governor’s race. His one term legacy is the state’s New Energy Economy, 57 pieces of legislation to move the state from reliance on less costly on fossil fuels to renewables. Ritter is a true believer, an eco-evangelical, who signed laws mandating 30 percent renewable energy standards and fuel switching.

In April 2009, Governor Ritter hand-delivered two letters to Energy Secretary Steven Chu who was touring NREL. One letter urged the Department of Energy to grant a $300 million taxpayer-guaranteed loan to Abound Solar:

This request for $300 million would allow [Abound Solar] to triple production capacity within 12 months, develop a second manufacturing facility within 18 months and hire an additional 1,000 employees.

Abound received $400 million in July 2010. By all accounts, the solar panel company will not meet Ritter’s original promise of triple capacity in a year and a new facility within 18 months. Just won’t happen that fast.

When Ritter left office in January 2011, he became the Director of the Center for the New Energy Economy at CSU and one of the highest paid administrators on campus, thanks to Stryker.

President Barack Obama

President Obama received $11,700 directly from Stryker and Joseph Zimlich, who is a director at Abound Solar and is also associated with Stryker’s Bohemian Foundation. No doubt Obama benefitted as well from Stryker’s donations to other democrat causes including Campaign Money Watch and Democrat White House Victory Fund.

In Obama’s weekly radio address on July 3, 2010, he announced an acceleration of “the transition to a clean energy economy and doubling our use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power – steps that have the potential to create whole new industries and hundreds of thousands of new jobs in America.”

He said that Abound Solar:

will manufacture advanced solar panels at two new plants, creating more than 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs. A Colorado plant is already underway, and an Indiana plant will be built in what’s now an empty Chrysler factory. When fully operational, these plants will produce millions of state-of-the-art solar panels each year.

That radio address was the formal announcement that Abound Solar received a $400 million loan guarantee courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. Taxpayers get the risk while individuals get the profit.

To recap, Abound Solar receives support from Pat Stryker and Colorado State University both of which fund and promote Congresswoman Betsy Markey. She in turn votes yes on Cap and Trade and urges the federal government to approve the Abound loan.

Abound Solar then contributes to TV ads thanking Markey for her yes vote on Cap and Trade.

Governor Bill Ritter hand delivers letters to Energy Secretary Steven Chu urging the DOE to grant the loan guarantee. When he decides not to run for a second term, he is offered a job at CSU, which is funded in part by Pat Stryker.

President Barack Obama benefitted from Pat Stryker’s political donations. In July 2010, he announces a $400 million loan guarantee to Abound.

Can’t get a $400 million loan? Apparently you don’t know and fund the right people.